


Right Hand Man

by herowndeliverance (atheilen)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon Era, Gen, could be read as pre-Whamilton if you squint, implied Hamliza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 06:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11594841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheilen/pseuds/herowndeliverance
Summary: We all know the story: a young officer desperate to make his mark. A general in dire need of assistance. An alliance that wins a war and builds a nation.At this performance the roles will be played a little differently.





	Right Hand Man

**Author's Note:**

> Because what everyone needed was a completely different AU about these two by me, obviously.
> 
> Thanks to iniquiticity and the-everqueen for encouragement and ideas!

George Washington did not like to think of himself a man much beholden to preconceived notions. But the man in front of him did not look anything like what he thought a military leader ought to be, and it unnerved him more than he wanted to admit.

_The General is brilliant,_ he reminded himself. _He will be our salvation, if anyone will._

Their salvation or their undoing, and it was impossible to say which.

Alexander Hamilton. Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. The bastard orphan Creole who had clawed his way up from nothing in His Majesty's service, then married his way into something approaching respectability when he'd courted the daughter of one of the great Dutch landowners in New York. They said he'd shouted both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams down in the middle of the Continental Congress, that he'd stunned them all by showing up in his military uniform, ready to declare war, and then had tried to turn down the command. Said he felt himself unqualified, which was a ridiculous line if George had ever heard one. Of course Hamilton had wanted it, how could one not want such a thing? 

They said it was Hamilton who had won them back New York, when any commander with sense would have retreated. They said Hamilton would die rather than retreat. They said his tactics bordered on the dishonorable, though he himself was praised for his honesty and integrity by all who knew him personally. They said he loved his pretty wife to distraction and couldn't look at another when she was in the room. They said darker things about his loves too, that he was plagued with the sin that beset soldiers, and had a preference for pretty young men, whom he used like playthings and then discarded. (They didn't tend to say that more than once in George's hearing. It may have been true, but it was hardly useful for morale.)

So the General was a creature of passion, of unfettered appetites—for blood and glory and lust and money. And unlike other men who waned such things, he did not let himself be dissipated by them. Rather, he tended to get what he wanted, against all odds. George respected that. And, he had to admit, feared it a little too.

Right now, though, the fearsome General Hamilton looked like nothing so much as an overworked lawyer, his spectacles sliding off his nose and into the pile of papers covering his desk. The dark circles under his eyes were deeply etched, in the way of those who found sleep a foreign country, visited only rarely. His hair, silvered at the temples, hung limp in his face.

Then he smiled.

It was an oddly boyish smile, thought George. A quicksilver thing, friendly with an edge. It lit up his face, somehow, made its odd proportions into a coherent whole. George, who had grown up without natural charms, wished he could ask General Hamilton how he got the trick of that.

"Captain Washington," he said.

George kept himself at attention. "Sir."

"You don't say much, do you? I rather like that, sometimes, in a man, if it turns out he's quiet because he has tact, and not because he has nothing to say and is trying to make up for a lack of cleverness by pretending he has tact. Never having been possessed of tact myself, it's hard for me to tell the difference. But I think you are the first sort of man, not the second. Am I correct, Captain?"

George had no idea what any of this meant. "Sir."

"You come highly recommended, you know."

Recommended for what? "Sir?"

"Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox wanted you on their staff. Do you know how damnably difficult it is to get those two to agree on matters of personnel? I'll tell you. It's near impossible."

Oh. He knew what this was. If he were the sort of man to curse, he might have done it then. "Generals Greene and Knox thought my talents suitable for the position of aide-de-camp. I knew myself ill-suited for the role."

"Why? Good Virginia gentleman, aren't you? It's a logical career move."

The General said _good Virginia gentleman_ like that was something to be ashamed of. "Of course, sir, but not one that would suit me. My nature is better suited to the line."

"Ah, of course. You want to fight. I want to fight too, but I fear I shall tragically bleed to death on a papercut before I see action again. Very well, then, boy. Go to. Escape while you still can." He waved his hand like a king dismissing him from an audience.

George wasn't sure whether that counted as a real dismissal, so he stayed put. Hamilton grinned like he'd won something.

"Would you like to know what Greene and Knox said about you, Captain?"

George really, really would. "I would hope they found me a good and prudent officer, sir."

"They said you're one of the best we have, and that you're being wasted where you are because you're too cautious. We cannot afford waste. We're working with a third of what Congress promised us."

George had to struggle not to recoil from the criticism. "My caution saved my men's lives at New York."

"An action you disapproved of," Hamilton said quickly. Too quickly. George didn't know what gave him away. How had he made that leap? "Why?"

He couldn't answer that question. He couldn't not answer that question. He felt almost dizzy, in the close air of headquarters. Was every word that came out of Hamilton's mouth a trap? "Sir, it's not my place to question the decisions of the general staff." Though Hamilton had trampled over his staff. He seemed to do that a lot.

"The role of a sycophant ill becomes you, Washington. I know you're all kiss-asses in _Virginia,_ but you will not be so here. Answer the question, I haven't got all day."

It was the insult that made his temper more heated than it might otherwise have been. That, and not Hamilton's disappointment, which was nothing to him. "It was a waste. A bloodbath that served no purpose. Sir."

"No purpose except not to let one of our strongholds fall into the enemy's hands. But sure. That's but a trifle."

"At what cost? We're already outgunned, outnumbered, outmanned, and we lost still more."

"No," said Hamilton. "Say what you mean. I lost them. It was me. Me and no one else."

They were both breathing heavily, and George could hardly stay at attention. "Yes, sir."

Hamilton, unaccountably, brightened. "But see, that's exactly why I need you! You're careful, and smart, and ambitious, and honest. Exactly the sort of man I need at my right hand."

Not just a position on the staff, then. George would be first among equals, if he took the position. First in the General's counsels. And if he read this right, his last shield against disaster.

"I need you," said Hamilton. "I need help, and if I do not get it, we will lose this war."

George's throat was dry. "Sir," he choked out, "it is an honor, of course."

"Think it over," Hamilton said. "I do not ask for half-hearted and resentful service. If you wish to continue wasting yourself, I won't stop you. Nor will you face any repercussions for not taking my offer. You have my word on that, whatever it is worth to you."

"I did not doubt that, sir," said George, realizing it was true 

"That will be all, then, Captain. See yourself out." Hamilton smoothed his rumpled jacket and stood. As George bowed and left, he saw the General pacing the room like a caged beast.

The commission was delivered to him a scant two hours later, which he supposed was Hamilton's idea of giving him ample time to consider his decision. It stated he would have the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel—a nice sweetener, that. George admired the gesture.

Accompanying the commission was a hand-written note. The handwriting was oddly beautiful, even for something scrawled in a hurry. It read: _What do you say? Take a chance for once. AH._

George shook his head ruefully. It was not the sort of offer one refused, even with Hamilton's promise that he would face no adverse consequences.

At least working with Hamilton wouldn't be boring.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: [herowndeliverance](herowndeliverance.tumblr.com).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Clarification of Orders](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11621061) by [iniquiticity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity)




End file.
